During my 30 days to a token challenge I noticed one really big thing about herb and potion prices: They changed a lot.
Know your costs
Obviously when you are doing any amount of crafting for profit you need to know what your costs are. I usually use the default material price in TSM which means it calculates the cost using the market value of the materials. This works well when materials usually are available for the market value, but if prices fluctuate a lot it gets quite a bit harder. Market value is calculated as a wighted rolling average, so it takes prices over the last 14 days into account. Usually this makes it quite stable, but without the AH API for mists servers it is actually quite unstable based on how often and when you scan.
Prices vary a lot
Throughout the two weeks I spent on the 30 days to a token challenge the herb prices varied a ton. Prices would go from 1 gold up to above 3 gold and back. Potions prices would similarly vary from 2g60s up to 5 gold and down again. For the herbs this was not just the current price, but the market value would change a ton as well.
Am I making a profit?
This complicates decision making a lot. When doing potions, you need to assess both your material cost and your expected sale price. If the crafting cost in TSM can vary +/-1g50s from day to day what do you even use?
Avgbuy?
TSM does have access to your average purchase price. I don’t particularly like it, because it will not take into account price trends. If the price is varying alot, but in general 50s higher than it was three weeks ago, then you don’t want to include what you bought herbs for three weeks ago. TSM also has smartavgbuy, which only takes into account the last X purchases, where X is the amount you currently have in your inventory. This is better, but if you don’t have anything left from your last shopping session then it wont have a price.
Hardcoded values to the rescue
What I ended up doing was to simply hardcode the material prices. This is very easy for markets where there aren’t that many materials, such as potions. I would set the gold price based on what I had seen in my last scans or what I expected to buy them for. Then I can assess the current price of the potions and what day it is. For Potions the prices would typically spike on the weekly reset and on Sundays.
Typical decision
Here’s a quick sample decision. If herb prices are above what I had typically seen lately and it’s Saturday I would put in the current prices as a material cost. Then I would check and see if the potions are profitable currently. If they are selling for a profit on Saturday even with higher than normal mats I would go all in on restocking for Sunday, which usually had higher prices. If it’s not profitable currently I would most likely do a small restock, but not a huge one as I would need the price to move significantly to make a profit.
If markets change quickly, use hardcoded values
When prices are changing quickly you should use hardcoded gold values, both for material prices as well as for posting items like gems. When you do this you do need to check your prices at least once a day to make sure they still make sense, but it is by far the best way to get correct pricing and to make the right restocking decisions.